The painting is now in the Carnavalet Museum in Paris, France.

Claude Cholat was a wine merchant living in Paris on the Rue Noyer at the start of the French Revolution in 1789.

[1] On the morning of 14 July a large Revolutionary crowd gathered outside the royal prison called the Bastille and in the afternoon fighting broke out between the crowd and the royal garrison.

[1] Cholat fought on the side of the Revolutionaries, manning one of their cannon during the battle.

It combines all the events of the day into a single graphical representation.